Rock Atlas Hits The USA

Having recently completed the British and Irish music locations guide book Rock Atlas, which was published late last year, author David Roberts has just begun work on the USA edition.

Last month he kicked off the mammoth task researching the new Rock Atlas with the book’s first location in the former cowboy town of Winslow, Arizona. If you are a fan of the Eagles, this is a place you’ll have heard numerous times, or at least every time you play the band’s first big hit ‘Take It Easy’. Country rock’s finest have created quite a tourist trap in this small dusty town where the song’s “standing on a corner in Winslow. Arizona” and the “girl my Lord in a flatbed Ford” lines have been imortalised with a statue, mural and memorial paving area. Even at 9.30am one saturday morning in March 2012 a queue was forming of music fans wanting pictures. David Roberts got his picture and scribbled some notes that will end up in his new book when published in October 2013. Only around 600 more locations to research and his work will be done. His next stop? Joshua Tree National Park, for some Gram Parsons and U2 connections.